The University of Oregon’s own Department of Public Safety (which ‘the Ol Dirty informs us “is like a police department for the campus,” a claim akin to saying the ASUO is like a government for students) is trying to get themselves some Tasers. According to this Emerald article, the “attempted murder” of two DPS officers who were nearly drowned in the Millrace by a 52 year-old man two months ago both is and is not the motivating factor in the move to “explore the possibility of arming campus public safety officers with Tasers.” It appears as if “Our pepper spray didn’t work this one time” is all the argument that DPS has to make to bring a “less-lethal” weapon which raises serious medical questions to our campus. Hopefully the Administration realizes that making DPS feel more like “real cops” is not worth the inevitable fiasco when some undertrained campus goon zaps the wrong kid, or someone with a heart condition.

Hey Nate:
Has Axelrod given you a position on the DPS Tasers?
Has The Slate (TM) met on this one yet?
Or did you… y’know, wanna try forming your own opinion on a campus issue?
Or, just carry on with the lame cheap shots.

Hey Nate, as long as she’s still posting, I may have a chance… so back off.

Kidding. Anyway, I’d love to see DPS with some fancy new gizmos. At a campus in my hometown, they also decided it would be wise to give their fake cops some Tasers as well.

The result? Let’s just say Tasers are a little less-lethal than one would have them seem. One kid got jacked up on some kind of shrooms (I don’t know which, so please don’t ask me if you can buy some) and went crazy, so the cops attempted Tasering him 17 times. It was disgusting. Lesson learned: fake cops cannot effectively Taser crazy people into submission. Fancy that.

When is the University going to ditch DPS and start contracting with EPD? I know they’ve been thinking about it for quite some time, which they claim is at least part of the reason why Tom Hicks is still interim director (as opposed to being promoted to just director). DPS really needs a new office, and that’s somewhat tied in with the parking structure the U wants to build, the thinking being that the new office would be on the bottom floor of the parking garage. But questions about the future of DPS have tied things up (as has the fact that a parking garage is horrendously expensive and is somewhat dependent on the new basketball arena). This might of all changed though now that Frances Dyke is in charge. But at least when Dan Williams was around, that was the situation.